First of all, please note that, despite what I wrote yesterday about 'sacred truth', and despite the outrageous (or is it???) theory I postulated, about the true origin of the name barbecue being suppressed by a special-interests conspiracy, kettle cooking works not only for pork shoulders, pork butts, and uncured hams, but also for beef brisket and whole chickens. It's probably good, too, for whatever else you want to cook, but I only say probably because pork, beef, and chicken are the only foods with which I have personal experience, and I wouldn't want to mislead you.
Anyhow, you do know what I'm talking about when I say barbecue kettle, right? You don't fill it with water and light a fire under it. Instead, a barbecue kettle sits up off the ground on metal legs, and both the food and the fire go inside it (not necessarily in that order). The remainder of this post deals with selecting the right kettle and the right fuel.
The most popular barbecue kettles, and the ones with which I am most familiar, incidentally, are manufactured by Weber®. Over the years, I've owned several of these kettles, and I can vouch for them. They're inexpensive, well-designed, simply constructed, made of high-quality materials, they last for years, their cooking performance does not degrade over time, and they have convenient, fairly precise, and easy-to-use controls (i.e., ventilation/damper system). The only maintenance a kettle needs is a good cleaning at least once a season.
There are even kettles available that come with LP gas-fueled starter systems. If your kettle pulls double duty - you use it for both barbecuing and general charcoal grilling - such a starter system can be convenient. When you use your kettle for charcoal grilling, use the starter system to ignite the charcoal instead of charcoal lighter fluid.
Bottom line, kettles give you a lot of bang for your buck. That's a good thing, too, because a little kettle won't do for the kind of barbecuing we're talking about here. You'll need a middling big one. My kettle's a no-frills thirty-six (or thereabouts) incher, which is plenty big for a 10- to 14-pound pork shoulder.
Now, as to fuel, it's been my experience that hardwood gives the best results, and so I recommend it. My kettle, which is used only for barbecuing and, hence, has been fueled only by hardwood - chunks of hickory, mainly, with a few chunks of mesquite thrown in for some spiciness to the smoke - since the day I brought it home.
For starting my barbecuing fire, I use fat wood. Fat wood is a by-product of tree farming. It consists of long, thin slivers, called splints, of highly resinous - and highly flammable - pine wood. The splints are taken from the stump of the pine tree after the tree itself has been harvested. Since fat wood contains a lot of resin, it burns really hot. This ignites the hickory/mesquite fuel very quickly.
Fat wood (also spelled fatwood) itself leaves no residue to affect food flavor, and it has been consumed entirely by the time the fuel wood is burning sufficiently to start the cooking. I just lay a few splints in a crossing, or "asterisk", pattern in the grate of the kettle, and carefully stack wood chunks on top of the fat wood. I pile the wood chunks high, in order to expose more of them to the flame of the fatwood. Then I light the end of a fat wood splint, which I made sure would be sticking out like a fuze from the wood chunk pile when I stacked it, and before long, the fire's blazing nicely and I'm ready to barbecue.
Now, it's ironic that the first fat wood I ever saw for sale was labeled 'Georgia Fat Wood', and yet fat wood is not available year-around in Georgia, or at least it isn't in the Atlanta area. Oh, well. This just means that I have to lay in a goodly supply of it when it is available. I hope this is not the case where you live, but if it is, you can do like I do in a pinch and order the stuff from L.L. Bean (http://www.llbean.com).
Monday, we'll talk in detail about fuel and temperature control in kettle barbecuing.
Happy cooking!
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